Re: MicroXML design goals

Uche Ogbuji scripsit:

> I propose that the next iteration MicroXML draft cover just xml:lang and
> xml:space.  I don't want to discard xml:id and xml:base, but I think these
> belong in a separate layer, and even if they are added to the core we can
> argue doing so in a later iteration.

I disagree entirely.  xml:id and xml:base are much more important than
xml:space, which is mostly superseded by the space-handling facilities
of XSLT.  In particular, we should encourage document and schema authors
to use xml:id from day one, making it the de facto standard for element
identification in MicroXML documents.

I think the idea of xml:space was that it would be put into the XHTML DTD
so that XHTML processors could determine by its presence which elements
preserved space without needing hard-coded knowledge.  In the end,
neither DTDs nor XHTML have been winners.

> For one thing, if we talk xml:base in the spec we would probably want to
> add a baseuri property on the element model, and ditto for an id property
> re xml:id.  It would be nice to avoid that.

Those are convenience or (less politely) junk properties.  We shouldn't
put anything into the data model that's not logically required.

That doesn't mean that they should not be present in a practical API.
The MicroLark Element object provides getLanguage and getId methods that
just search up the tree, a relatively cheap operation.

> Maybe the core data model should mention that additional specifications can
> augment the core properties. Sure that could be implicit, but it's worth
> signaling.

I suppose, though I am no fan of the PSVI.  Still, type annotations
would make some sense.

-- 
John Cowan  cowan@ccil.org   http://ccil.org/~cowan
It's the old, old story.  Droid meets droid.  Droid becomes chameleon.
Droid loses chameleon, chameleon becomes blob, droid gets blob back
again.  It's a classic tale.  --Kryten, Red Dwarf

Received on Tuesday, 14 August 2012 15:40:50 UTC